Believer

By Ewan

Mon, 27 Mar 2017
  • 660 reads
 

 

 

You trace your blood to the seventy sons of God,
three score and ten peoples, more than twelve tribes.
You point to Aleppo and call it Ugarit.
Three dozen centuries and yet you are sure.
How can you claim such lineage, this heritage?
Your prophet and his God are half as old:
a quindecad of centennia and you feel safe
in denying what has come before the Caliphate.
You see no contradiction in your history,
forgetting that what is written is
and what survives is read.

 

Where were the thousand names before
little orphan Ali wrote them down
at Gabriel’s dictation?

 

But no, everything is second-hand,
heard in Chinese whispers,
the word of every God,
even yours,
is nothing more than rumour. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poem
Days Like These
Miscellaneous